DE 196 80 800 B4 discloses an axial rolling bearing composed of a cage which contains cylinder rollers or needles in pockets and which is arranged between two rotor disks. The cage with the rolling bodies held therein is movable at least slightly in the radial direction.
DE 1 525 205 A proposes a rolling bearing which comprises a radial bearing with needles or small rollers as rolling bodies, and an axial bearing with needles or rollers as rolling bodies and a bush or sleeve which has a cylindrical bearing ring for the radial bearing and a radial collar for the axial bearing. Radial-axial rolling bearings of said type are typically pushed onto a shaft and installed into a housing. Fields of application are for example dual-clutch transmissions or hydrodynamic converters in automatic transmissions.
FIG. 1 schematically shows the assembly of a conventional radial-axial rolling bearing. When the radial-axial rolling bearing 1 is pushed onto the shaft 2 as shown in FIG. 1, it may occur that the axial cage 3, which serves to hold the axial rolling bodies 4, is not precisely aligned with the shaft 2. The axial cage 3, when pushed onto the shaft 2, is centered by means of a bevel 5 on the shaft 2. When the radial-axial rolling bearing 1 is situated on the shaft 2 at the level of a groove 6, the axial cage 3 drops into the groove 6 and abuts against an edge 7 of the groove 6, where said axial cage 3 comes to rest. At this point, centering may still be carried out manually, if appropriate, by lifting the axial cage 3. However, when the radial-axial rolling bearing 1 has arrived at a further groove 8, there is the risk that the axial cage 3 comes to rest on an edge of the groove 8, such that the radial-axial rolling bearing 1 cannot be pushed into its final position. At this point, the installation space is limited by a housing 9, such that manual centering is not possible. For this reason, the assembly of such rolling bearings is complex and difficult in certain installation situations.